Last time EVE woke up in the Divide, which is some 2,400 miles from the Buy N Large city where she was shot. She finds herself in the company of Raul Tejada, whose only apparent purpose in the fic is to fix her up and provide New Vegas namedrop cred. With Raul properly namedropped, Cassidy shows up to provide another namedrop as well as provide some minor exposition and lead EVE to the main exposition source for the chapter: Ulysses. At that point, Ulysses does his best to provide a bunch of vague exposition in the chunkiest way possible. The whole chapter boils down to that the courier went crazy with power, took over the entirety of the West with his tiny robot army, and killed everyone in the Mojave in order to [error: no motivation found]. Meanwhile Ulysses formed a band of freedom fighters to do generic freedomy-type fighting. His job as exposition fountain complete, Ulysses closes the chapter with a bit of DEEP MEANINGFUL FORESHADOWING!!!!™ in the form of a vague statement about EVE beginning a new “road” that involves such dramatic and specific things as choices and consequences. If the fic were longer, I’d rename him Mr. Fortune Cookie, but today we’re doing the last chapter and Ulysses isn’t even in it.

So, this week we get to see what happened to WALL-E after he was attacked by the fic’s Foley team in chapter one.

*Taco drags himself into the riffing chamber, a box of tissues in one hand and a steaming cup of tea in the other*

Hey, patrons,it’s that magical time of year again! *Hack cough* Cold and flu season.

I’m going to keep things short today and only do one chapter; partly because I’m sick, but also because chapters four and five are a bit longer than the previous chapters. Last time we got a lot of stupid. So much that it’s hard to summarize, but the gist is that the courier attacks the Axiom with a bunch of soldiers and robots probably kills everyone. It’s pretty vague and there was a weird section about filling the captain’s quarters with tears, so it’s equally likely that the courier gave everyone a time out and took away their Super Nintendo for the rest of the week.

Anyway, let’s get to it before the cold medicine kicks in and I pass out.

In our last installment, we received what was essentially the beginning of Fallout: New Vegas but with the courier playing the part of Benny, and EVE playing the part of the courier. Because apparently that’s how writing works these days.

Well, terrible writing, anyway.

There was also a pointless scene in there about the crew of the Axiom setting up “repopulation camps,” which I think we’re all better off not thinking about. Following that was an even more pointless scene where WALL-E is fetched by EVE for a meeting with Captain McCrea.

And that was pretty much it since the bulk of the riff ended up being info dumping and cinematography shop-talk on my part. This week should be more fic-focused, so let’s head on in!

Hey, patrons! I’m back and ready to tackle another mini-project before moving onto something meatier. This mini-project is “Dawn By Eye” a WALL-E crossover with Fallout.

I’ll give you all a minute.

…

You all back? Good. So, for those who somehow have gone without seeing the movie, WALL-E is a Pixar movie featuring the titular character WALL-E, an automated garbage cleanup robot, and his adventures with EVE, a botanical specimen retrieval robot. The basic premise of the movie, which really doesn’t do it justice, is that at some point in the future rampant consumerism has left the world a giant garbage dump and humanity has to abandon it temporarily while everything is cleaned up. That’s where WALL-E comes into the picture. He’s the last remaining cleanup robot who is still doing his job one compacted garbage block at a time.

However, due to the extensive time he’s spent alone in autonomous mode, his programming has started to drift and he’s gone all “ghost in the machine.” He’s developed a personality as well as a huge collection of curiosities he’s found while digging through all the garbage. Eventually EVE shows up on her mission to find signs of plant life which would indicate that Earth is one again habitable.

Look, I’m not going to regurgitate the whole movie, so if you really want to know the low-down on WALL-E, just go watch it. The really important point I want to bring up here isn’t necessarily the plot of the movie anyway, but rather the way the movie is put together and presented. See, the thing that makes WALL-E so interesting is that it utilizes almost no dialogue to tell the main story, it’s almost entirely visual. Yes there is dialogue that tells the supporting story of the trash-heap that is future Earth, but the primary story of WALL-E and EVE as told from their perspective is essentially a story without any substantial dialogue.

This is one of those things that Pixar has excelled at for a long time and they have showcased through their fairly substantial library of short films. Pixar knows how to show something in the purest form. No words, no exposition, just visual storytelling. Probably their most famous example of this is the intro to UP that portrays the relationship of Carl and Ellie in an extremely powerful way.

WALL-E is that skill taken to the length of nearly an entire movie. Now, I bring this up specifically because it’s visual storytelling. Visual.

That should be a pretty hefty warning sign for most folk who are familiar with fanfiction. It would be difficult enough for a skilled veteran writer to convey a visual story with words, and here we’ve got an amateur trying to do just that. While also trying to mix in Fallout at the same time.

Today I have a very special treat for you, A Fallout x Tetris crossover! Now don’t get excited, it’s not as crazy as you think. Personally I was hoping for the adventures of L-block in Fallout: NV or something, but the reality turned out to be far more mundane than expected. I could get into that, but the summary covers it pretty well:

A Wastelander accidentally finds a game of Tetris after falling down a flight of stairs, she soon takes it and heads over to an nearby town to get it cashed in. Oneshot.

Now, you might notice that the fic is also sporting the coveted “drama” tag. If you’re wondering how that summary could lead to something dramatic, then you’re not alone. So strap in while we find the answer to that question.

Ladies and gentlemen, this is SuperFeatherYoshi, and I have finally returned from my year long hiatus! And I did not return empty handed.

Today we are going to take a look at Courier’s Effect, a Fallout/Mass Effect crossover. And boy oh boy is it awful. The sheer amount of research failures puts Hammer Effect to shame. It also features arguably one of the biggest Mass Effect self-insert Stu the library has ever seen, whose Stuness, in my humble opinion, is second only to good ol’ 23.